You're An Angel, And I'm Gonna Cry
by basset-voyager
Summary: Jo has managed to get herself a crush on the most popular girl in school and it so isn't going to turn out well. Joannael high school AU.


"Dude, you should totally ask her out."

Jo threw a sour cream and onion chip at Dean's head and he responded by pretending to pour his Coke into her hair. They were sitting curled up on Dean's couch, surrounded by snacks, Jo's Matrix Trilogy DVDs, and Dean's copies of the entire original series of Star Trek. It was the beginning of winter break, but Ash and Charlie were halfway across the world at some week-long genius camp and Sam was off hanging out with some girl from his English class, so it was basically just the two of them filling the time with movies like they'd done when they were kids.

"I can't just _ask her out, _idiot," Jo said, moving some of the candy wrappers off of the coffee table so she could put her feet up, "She's Miss Perfect Captain of Everything, and, I, in case you haven't noticed, am a freak with a knife collection."

"Hey, your knives are badass," Dean mumbled around a mouth full of chips.

"I would look like a moron, Dean," Jo said. Dean swallowed and put his hand on her shoulder.

"You wouldn't look like a moron, Jo," she told her sincerely, "What makes you look like a moron is that you actually_ like_ the second two Matrix movies. That's a friggin' abomination." Jo rolled her eyes and slumped into the couch.

"I can't believe I actually told you about this," she muttered.

"Hey, I think I'm in Latin with her older brother, maybe I could – "

"_No_."

"Jeez," said Dean, "Touchy, touchy. Just because you want to get in some popular girl's pants doesn't mean you should snap at me."

"Just watch the damn movie," Jo hissed, but she was smiling. Dean could usually make her feel better even if he was annoying. They'd tried dating for a while when he was in tenth grade and she in ninth, but it had been seriously awkward and they'd given up after about a month. He was her best friend, to be perfectly honest, and she trusted that he wouldn't tell anyone about her sort-of-crush on Anna Milton of all people.

Ok, maybe it was more than a sort-of-crush. Maybe she thought Anna Milton was a freaking angel on earth in a way that made her feel pathetic and stupid and more than a little creepy. After all, even though she'd been going to school with Anna since elementary, they'd only talked twice – once when Anna had come to archery club to do a profile for the school paper and another time when Jo had forgotten a soccer practice had just ended and cut through the girls' locker room on the way to the bathroom. In the latter, Anna had remembered her name and asked her about archery club (which had disbanded after Garth Fitzgerald shot himself in the foot), which would have been nice if Anna hadn't happened to be standing around casually in soccer shorts and a sports bra with no idea of the effect her waist was having on all the blonde nerds in the immediate vicinity.

It wasn't surprising that Anna had remembered her name, really. Anna was nice to everyone. Her eyes were dark and intelligent, and when you talked she'd fix them on you as if what you were saying was the most important thing she'd ever heard. And she'd smile at you, a full, unreserved smile with dimples and everything, and Jo remembered thinking that it was the kind of smile that saved people. Friggin' angel. Yeah, Jo had it pretty bad, much worse than she'd admit to Dean or anybody else. It's not like it would ever happen. Anna Milton was way out of her league.

* * *

Two days later, Jo was lying on her bed, flipping through the Dungeons and Dragons rulebook she'd borrowed from Charlie and blasting Foreigner out of her laptop, when her phone started to vibrate violently on the bedside table. She shut off the music and checked the Caller ID. Dean.

"Can't stay away from me, baby?" she cooed when she put it to her ear, and she could have sworn she heard Dean snort.

"What can I say?" he replied, "Your knife collection is irresistible."

"Shut up."

"You shut up."

"Very mature."

"Look, Ash and Charlie come back tonight and I figure we should do something, you know? Welcome back the geek squad. My parents are working and Sam's still attached at the lips with that Jessica girl, so we'd all have the house to ourselves." Jo could hear the noise of Dean driving in the background of the call.

"Won't their families want to hang out with them?" she asked.

"Psh," Dean said, "They can have dinner with the parents and then come hang out with the coolest people on earth."

"And then after, I assume they'll hang out with us?" Jo smirked.

"Ha ha."

Jo told Dean that she'd be over at 9:00, _yes _she'd try to score some beer, and _no, _she didn't mind if he brought some other friends from his grade – shouldn't he be asking Ash and Charlie that and not her? After she hung up, she threw on a sweater and hopped down the stairs to ask her mom if she could borrow the car later. Knowing Ellen, it would require some serious groveling, but she'd manage it eventually because Ellen liked Ash and Charlie and Dean and knew Jo wasn't going to do anything stupid with them. It would be a good get-together – the whole gang there, some beer, maybe a movie or two or some stupid game. The perfect pre-Christmas party with the people she loved best.

* * *

Jo hadn't actually rung the doorbell at Dean's house in years. She walked right in and tossed her coat in the mudroom before carting the six-pack she'd lifted from her mom into the kitchen, calling indiscriminately into the next room, "Hey, guys, I hope no fun happened without me!" An excited scream came from the living room, and Charlie Bradbury came running across the tile and hugged Jo around the neck.

"Jo, I have so many stories of drunken hacker girl hook-ups in foreign lands, you aren't even going to _believe_ it," she squealed.

"Yeah, cause the point of the trip wasn't to learn or anything," Jo laughed, extricating herself from her friend's arms.

"Hey, we _learned_," came a voice from behind Charlie. It belonged to Ash, looking amused and like he was already a little drunk, "Doesn't mean neither of us have a wild side." Jo raised her eyebrows at him.

"Do you have any other side?" she asked, and pulled him in for a hug.

"Missed you, Jo," said Ash. Jo smiled at him, then looked around for Dean.

"Where's the host of this rocking party?" she asked.

"He brought some friends from his Spanish class or something," Charlie told her, "He feels the need to impress them more than us."

"Well, I, for one, am offended," Jo said, putting one arm around Charlie and the other around Ash and pulling them into the living room with her. The first thing she noticed was a short guy with brown hair hovering around the bowl of M&Ms and looking far too amused than could be reasonable at everything around him. She was pretty sure he was a senior, but she couldn't quite remember his name. Dean was sitting on the couch talking to a girl with hair the color of worn pennies and shining, intelligent eyes that made Jo's stomach drop into her knees.

Anna. Anna Milton was seated on Dean's couch eating Pringles and giving him the ghost of that special smile, her eyes crinkling with laughter at something he'd said. She wore a bright yellow bandana that went perfectly with her red hair, which she'd put in pigtails, and an uncharacteristic jacket of soft dark leather. Seeing her here in Dean's house was such a bizarre clash of universes that it took Jo a second to process it, but once she immediately started wondering if it would be possible for her to fake an emergency phone call from Ellen and get the hell out of there.

Before she could even reach for her phone, Dean noticed her and leaned over to clap her on the shoulder.

"Glad you could make it!" he said, flashing her a winning smile and pushing a can of Coke into her hand. _Note to self_, Jo thought. _Never tell Dean Winchester anything ever again_. She tried to look normal while communicating to Dean with her eyes that she was going to murder him as soon as tonight was over.

"I always do," she said, forcing her mouth into a smile.

"This is Gabriel, from my Latin class," Dean explained, gesturing to the guy by the M&Ms, "He's a weirdo, but he's not bad –"

"Thanks, Dean-o, that's nice of you," Gabriel interjected, popping a handful of candy into his mouth.

"Gabe, this is Jo," Dean finished. Jo tore her gaze fully away from Anna and waved awkwardly at Gabriel, who grinned at her.

"Gabe brought along his sister_, Anna_," Dean continued, "She's in your grade, right?" He gave Jo a suggestive eyebrow wiggle that Jo prayed Anna couldn't see.

"We know each other," Anna said quickly, and smiled at Jo – a big, toothy smile. There was a pause. Jo tried to catch Ash or Charlie's eye across the room, but they were deep in conversation with Gabriel, something about a plan to hack the principal's private e-mail. Dean coughed and ran a hand through his short hair.

"Anyway, I should, uh, go get the beer and stuff…you know, host duties and all," he said, "You guys hang out, or whatever." He gave Jo one last significant look and then he was gone into the kitchen, leaving Jo and Anna alone by the couch staring at each other.

"Hi," Anna said, "You wanna sit down?" Jo sat on the cushion next to Anna, wishing she'd bothered to run a brush through her hair before she came here. It's not like she expected the girl she had a crush on to appear out of nowhere at a not-even-a-real-party that was supposed to be just her friends with her bandana and her smile and her stupid copper hair.

"So, I don't really know anyone here," Anna said, grinning at her knees.

"Then why did you come?" Jo asked before she could stop herself.

"I don't know," Anna said, "Nothing better to do, I guess." Jo felt her heart sink even though she knew it would have been ridiculous to hope for anything else.

"Are you still shooting arrows at things after school?" Anna asked her. You had to give her points for drawing on the one thing she knew about Jo in order to be polite.

"No, Principal Roman put a stop of the club after Garth put an arrow through his foot," Jo explained. Anna's eyes widened and her face immediately became full of concern.

"Oh my god! Was he alright?" she exclaimed, and Jo started giggling in spite of herself.

"He was fine!" she assured Anna, "It takes more than that to faze Garth. The guy was tweeting all the way to the hospital."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Anna blanched for a second, then started to laugh, covering her mouth with her hand as she did so. Jo had to fight the urge to pull her hand away so she could see the other girl's smile.

"I didn't even think the arrows in archery club were sharp!" Anna got out between gasps of laughter.

"They aren't," Jo said, "But Garth managed to do some damage to himself anyway."

"I really shouldn't think that's funny," Anna sighed, shaking her head.

"It's alright," Jo told her, "Garth thought it was the most hilarious thing to happen since the invention of the knock-knock joke, so I don't think he'd mind." Besides, she thought, you have a nice laugh.

"Secretly," Anna whispered, leaning in so close that her breath stirred Jo's hair, "I always hoped somebody would hit Coach Zachariah. Nothing bad! Just, like, in the knee or something. I feel awful about it now."

Jo had to turn away to avoid spitting her drink all over Anna.

"I wouldn't have guessed you had such a violent streak," she said in mock horror.

"Well, I'm full of surprises," Anna replied, and Jo stared at her. Was that flirting? It sounded like flirting. Was there the tiniest possibility that Anna Milton was flirting with her?

"...It's not that I think Mr. Z is Darth Vader or anything," Anna was explaining when Jo finally snapped back to reality, "He's just a jerk. He thinks he can boss all the other coaches around even when they clearly know what's best for their teams more than he does."

"Yeah, but he's athletic director, right?" Jo said, "So they have to listen to him."

"Just because somebody's in an authority position doesn't mean they're always right," Anna said conclusively. Any hope that Jo's crush on Anna would go away once she really started talking to the girl was fading fast. She wanted to know about Anna's politics, her parents, her plans for future, what that red hair looked like undone and messy from sleep. Yeah, Jo realized, definitely all hope gone.

"So, what clubs are you in now that archery's gone kapoot?" Anna asked.

"Nothing much," Jo said, shrugging in what she hoped was a casual manner, "I do martial arts stuff outside of school and Charlie's been trying to get me on board this whole D&D thing - "

"Martial arts? Like karate?" Anna asked.

"Yeah, and fencing and all that," Jo said, conscious of how lame it sounded now, "I'm interested in it, just as an art, you know? My mom thinks it's stupid, so I have to save up my own money to pay for lessons. I don't know, it probably is stupid." Even now she didn't agree with that, but she didn't want to seem like even more of a geek than she already did in front of Anna.

"Jo, that's really cool," Anna insisted. Jo couldn't help but smile at her. Anna looked down at her knees again.

"You wanna go out onto the porch with me?" she asked, "It's kind of hot in here." Jo didn't think it was hot, but she sure as hell wasn't going to argue with that, so she nodded. Idly, she wondered how long they'd been talking and if Dean had instructed the others to leave them alone. Conspiring bastard. She really was going to murder him after this. Jo followed Anna out the front door and into the cold winter air that actually felt refreshing after Dean's stuffy living room. They leaned on the railing and looked out at the street.

"So, I lied a little when I said I came here because there was nothing better to do," Anna blurted, picking at her fingernails. Jo tried to ignore the butterflies in her stomach. It could be anything.

"Why did you come?" Jo asked.

"Well, Dean said you'd be here," Anna said, almost too lightly. The butterflies had turned into birds. Jo wasn't sure if she wanted to sing or throw up.

"Why would you care if I was here or not?" Jo said, "I mean, you don't know me."

"That's the point!" Anna's voice was more insistent now, her dark-bright eyes sincere, "I'd like to, but I've never really had much of an excuse to talk to you. I've always thought you were interesting. I remember once last year you kicked Fergus Crowley in the balls because he wouldn't stop coming on to you - "

"That got me suspended," Jo reminded her.

"It was _amazing,_" Anna laughed. There was a silence during with both girls stared out at the road again.

"Hey, Anna - " Jo blurted at the same time that Anna said, "Do you think - " They giggled a little and looked at each other.

"You go," said Anna, "I just went on a really embarrassing tirade."

Ok, Joanna Beth Harvelle, Jo told herself. It's now or fucking never. Either she'll say yes or she'll tell you you're barking up the wrong tree and it'll be awkward or she'll get angry and tell everyone in the school and it will be the end to what little social life you had in the first place. Great.

"Iwasjustwonderingifyouwanted togooutsometime," Jo blurted all at once. Anna smiled, a different smile than her usual one. It was smaller, more in her eyes than her mouth, but every bit as beautiful. Instead of responding, she leaned in and gently kissed Jo on the mouth, her hand coming up briefly to rest itself on Jo's shoulder. It was a short kiss, but enough for Jo to register that her lips were warm but her nose was cold from the winter air, and a flyaway strand of her hair tickled Jo's cheek. She pulled away and smiled at Jo again, then gestured back towards the door.

"I'd like that," she said cheerily, "Now, come on, It's freezing out here, and there are other people at this party thing, you know." She disappeared through the door, leaving Jo standing on the porch, her mouth slightly open and her fingers going numb from the cold.

Screw everything she'd thought earlier. She was going to buy Dean Winchester an apple pie every week for a year.


End file.
